After eight years of legal wrangling, the man who built AIG into the world’s
biggest insurer appeared in a New York court yesterday to defend himself
against fraud charges.

Hank Greenberg, 88, was forced out of AIG in 2005 after it was charged with
inflating its balance sheet through a series of fraudulent transactions in
2000 and 2001.

The insurer paid $1.6 billion to settle the charges with regulators and Mr
Greenberg agreed a $15 million settlement with the Securities and Exchange
Commission. A separate case against Mr Greenberg and Howard Smith, the
former chief financial officer, brought by the